Hills and Cobbles

Saturday’s race was Southeast of Brussels.  I took an hour and a half train ride over to Brussels then rode about 20km from the train station to the race.  It was a bit of a challenge to get out of Brussels but after many map checks finally made it to the race.  I was just barely in time, less than 5 minutes before registration closed.

Being East of Brussels this race had some smaller hills, straight from the start we hit the largest and steepest hill on the course.  It was a short sub minute power climb with a max grade of 13% and an elevation gain of 30 meters.  After that was a short downhill then back up with the last 100 meters of the uphill being cobbles.  A few hundred meters later was another section of cobbles, this one was longer at about 500 meters and a -3% grade.  After that was a false flat then a nice downhill.  The run into the finish was gently rolling and had a tailwind.  The cobbles didn’t feel too rough to me, I think the cobbles here were relatively smooth and my tire pressure was still low from racing in the rain earlier in the week.

We hit the first hill much harder than I expected and I slid towards the back.  Once we were about halfway through the first lap there was an accident well ahead of me, unfortunately, on subsequent laps, we saw that one of the guys involved had to be transported by ambulance.  The second time up the hill I was on the wrong side of a split, we closed the gap about half a lap later.  The third time up the hill I was again on the wrong side of a split, this time, we were not able to close the gap.  We continued on with 8-10 guys for the next several laps losing a guy or two on the hill and picking up a few that had been dropped from the leading groups.  With 6 laps to go our group’s race was ended and we were placed.

I stayed around to watch the finish, for the most part, there wasn’t really a main field left, it had splintered into 4-5 groups with a total of 25 or so guys.  On the last lap, everything just shattered, guys were coming in 1 and 2 at a time.

When I turned in my number after the race I found that I had placed 29th of 54, in the money again!! For 29th, I earned 10 euros.